By: Treona Jones

The 28-year-old Gambian entrepreneur, Momarr Mass Taal says he got into business by accident. He wanted to be a diplomat like his father but  at the age of 17, he started  printing t-shirts for fun, then for friends and gradually grew into a clothing brand, Malyka Clothing.

Within a few years he was manufacturing in Bangladesh and selling in five countries. He had the desire to build a business that would address the lack of value addition for local produce, He set about building a business which used value addition to create market for ”Tropingo Foods  after  he found that most local producers, particularly farmers, had market access problems , a groundnut/ mango processing and export company, was born.

He exports to Asia and Europe and is building a food dehydration processing facility in the Gambia and this made his company the largest exporter of Groundnut in Gambia in 2015. The company has 140 employees out of which 120 are women. While his company’s turn over for 2015 was $1.6 Million.